A Jewish mom learning every day; often the hard way.

sleep

It’s 8:30 and the house is quiet. All of the little people in my house are tucked in bed, asleep, or on their way. There is mess all around me, the whirlwind that was the past three hours, but I don’t mind. I can clean it up leisurely, at my pace, in quiet. Quiet. This…

“This is your seventh baby? This one is going to just pop right out, you will see…” I can’t tell you how many times I heard that over the past few months. My youngest is 5 1/2 – which means it has been a while since I have been pregnant. I was younger, fitter, and…

I have neglected this blog for a very long time. I am doubtful that there are any of you left still checking in, my once-faithful readers. I agreed to take on more work this fall. I love the work, but my new timetable does not leave me any time for blogging. It doesn’t leave me…

For me, one of the clearest “punishments” for choosing to live outside of the land of Israel is the three-day yom tov. Here in the diaspora, September has been a string of holidays chained together by a few work/shop/cooking days. My guess is that with the holidays coming at the same time as back-to-school and…

This i s day four of our annual family vacation. After feeling like I have been running up a steep hill for the first three days, I am finally hitting my stride, reaching that “aahhh, I am on vacation” feeling. Believe me, it won’t last for the duration. It will come and go like the…

I have really been struggling with blogging lately. I just cannot seem to find the time to write, and the ideas and pieces I want to complete are accumulating just like the clutter in the house. In my very first post I expressed my concern with this problem. Perhaps this is why there are so…

We were invited to be guests in someone else’s home this past Shabbat. That’s right, 8 out of the 9 of us picked up and moved in with another family for Shabbat. This very brave, gracious family has twelve – yes twelve – children. Don’t worry; only ten of them were home. We don’t go…

The worst bedtime issues in my house are not those of any of the children. They are entirely my own. I like control. I like feeling in control, I like being in control. And being a parent, I have found, is one long road of giving up all control. It starts when your body doesn’t…

I seem to have hit a selfish phase lately. I think it has been brought on, like most things, by a combination of factors. I am not saying it like it’s a bad thing, it just is. Pesach was a long two weeks of break from school, with my husband spending a lot of the…

If my life had a theme it would be the old Yiddish expression “man plans, G-d laughs”. When I wrote my last blog post I was quite sure at an early hour how the day would go. I had been there before, and confidently typed out my plans for the day…. … I hadn’t counted…